SJC rules ‘Padilla’ retroactive

The Supreme Judicial Court has ruled that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Padilla v. Kentucky, 130 S. Ct. 1473 (2010), is retroactive, but this didn’t help one defendant convicted of drug and liquor offenses.

The defendant Michael Clarke claimed that his guilty pleas should be vacated under Padilla because his trial counsel provided him ineffective assistance by not advising him that a likely consequence of his guilty plea would be deportation.

Writing for the SJC, Justice Robert J. Cordy noted that Padilla can be applied retroactively on collateral review of guilty pleas, such as this defendant’s, which were obtained after the enactment of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.

But, Cordy went on, Clarke’s motion to vacate his guilty pleas should nevertheless be denied because “the defendant has made an insufficient showing that had he been properly informed of the immigration consequences of his guilty pleas, there is a reasonable probability that the result of [his] proceeding would have been different.”